I'm Matt Downey, an AI product designer and curator of what matters next.
I'm currently building AI-powered software as the Head of Design at Atlas UP. I also send Digital Native, the newsletter for designers in the AI era.
- Pro tip to get 3D tiles for a hero section: 1. Mock up flat 2D tiles in Figma. Simple shapes, no detail. 2. Drop this prompt into ChatGPT with your 2D image attached: "Using the attached flat icon strip as the exact shape reference, create a premium 3D skeuomorphic hero vignette in a cinematic product‑render style. Turn each icon into a thick, chunky rounded charcoal keycap with clearly visible sidewalls, deep soft bevels, and raised white symbols that perfectly match the original shapes. Arrange the tiles in a single horizontal strip with a gentle arc and a clear wave of tilt from left to right: subtle random rotation plus slight pitch and yaw changes so some keys lean toward the viewer and others away, with small height offsets and overlaps to feel physically hand‑placed. Use a low, close three‑quarter product‑render camera with a slight top‑down angle so both faces and sides are visible and the keys fill most of the frame. Light everything with a soft but bright top‑left key light and a cool rim on the right edges, creating smooth highlights, visible curvature, and soft grounded shadows behind and below each tile on a pure black background, keeping the scene clean, high‑contrast, and focused entirely on the icon strip." 3. A few seconds later you'll have a 3D tile strip ready for your site hero. Give it a try, I'd love to see what you come up with.
X / Twitter1d ago - Innovator Grotesk is one of my favorite typefaces for UI and grid work. The spacing is so even it just falls into place, and it's geometric without losing the human touch.
X / Twitter2d ago - When Systems Think Without Designers
Newsletter4d ago - What you think becomes what you say, and what you say becomes what you do. Master your energy.X / Twitter5d ago
- Hat tip to the @framer team, 3.0 looks amazing. And one heckuva ship list: - Framer Agents on canvas - AI-powered site maintenance - Git-style Branching workflow - External AI agent integrations - Unified Community and MarketplaceX / Twitter1w ago
- Speed Without Discovery
Newsletter1w ago - Burning the late night oil (and tokens) trying out Fable 5 and /workflow on a component library consolidation. 10 minutes of work and already 52% of my 5 hour window is gone. Token hungry is an understatement. 💸
X / Twitter2w ago
